Sorrow's Embrace
by Imagination 5
Summary: When the pain of life becomes too much, what will she do to stifle it?


_**Sorrow's Embrace**_

There she stood, atop the cliffs, staring down at the unmoving sea below. Tears leapt to her eyes and she fiercely blinked them away. She would not cry. She had already cried too much.

* * *

"I'm not abandoning him!" Wakka cried angrily. His arm was in a cast. "Its my calling, ya?"

"You spend more time at your _calling _than with your own son!" Lulu retorted, beckoning at the tiny bundle in a cot beside their bed. "Its time you quit!"

"Blitzball got me through Chappu, through not having a mother and a father to tuck me in at night!"

"How many times, Wakka, have you come home with a broken arm, or a leg in a cast from training?"

Lulu took a deep breath and stared at him unblinkingly with her startlingly violet eyes.

"I don't want you to go to Luca this year… or ever again."

Wakka gazed at her in astonishment with his muddy brown eyes. His mouth opened and closed, mouthing words he was too shocked to utter. Turning from her, he stormed from the hut, leaving her there as Vidina began to cry.

* * *

That had been the last time she had seen him alive.

* * *

After calming her infant son, Lulu had walked outside for a breath of fresh air.

"Morning!" Yuna and Tidus walked up to her, arms linked, her head on his shoulder.

Lulu managed a smile. "Morning Yuna, Tidus."

"Hey, what's up with Wakka?" asked Tidus, unlinking his arm from Yuna's.

"Hmm?" Lulu looked intensely at him.

"I just saw him stomp out of the village. He looked really mad."

"With that broken arm?" Lulu shook her head. "As stubborn as a shoopuf!"

"Did you have a fight?" asked Yuna concernedly.

"A little one," replied Lulu. "You know what he's like. Let him sulk for a while."

* * *

In truth she just didn't want to admit she'd gone too far. Curse her stupid pride! If she hadn't been so foolish he might-

No. No point dwelling on what might have happened. Every minute she stood there, another little fragment of her resolve vanished.

She took a deep breath and braced her body for the impact of death.

* * *

It was evening and he still hadn't returned. She was beginning to get worried.

He was probably on the beach, waiting for sunset, or sitting in that cave again.

Still, it wasn't like him. She would go out to look for him.

* * *

How could she have possibly known what she would find?

* * *

He wasn't on the road or in the cave, so he had to be on the beach; it was the only place left on the island.

As her black shoes touched the sand, lit by the orange light of sunset, her heart stopped.

And it would never truly start again.

Practically an army of fiends stood on the beach, all gathered in a circle. There were wolves, a Zu and a dozen blue, jelly like flans.

Blood stained the sand, grotesquely prominent among the explosion of colourful fiends gathered around the corpse.

_It could be a cat or a traveller_, she remembered thinking and to her disgust, hoping it was true, hoping that someone else's wife or husband lay there, being gorged upon by the fiends.

But then she caught a flash of red hair and the deathly white cast on his arm.

The fiends noticed her. The wolves galloped, the Zu flew and the flans slithered towards her.

Each of their maws bright with crimson blood.

A black distortion gathered around the creatures and with a savage scream from Lulu, the Ultima spell consumed them with an explosion of light.

When it cleared, only pyreflies remained, trailing colourful light behind them as they drifted around the sky.

She ignored them and sprinted to her husband.

She dropped to her knees, cradling his horribly mutilated body to her chest, screaming in anguish as a flood of tears cascaded down her pale face.

* * *

Fresh tears came even now as she remembered her husband's body being gently prised from her arms and her being escorted numbingly, obediently, back to the village

She reached into the folds of her dress and pulled out a moogle puppet. She held it for a moment, looking at its simple line of a mouth and its pink nose.. Then she dropped it and it was lost as it disappeared with a tiny splash into the sea.

She reached again and again and a waterfall of moogles, cactuars and cait siths tumbled into the azure sea with a wealth of splashes.

* * *

Yuna was, for the first time in three years, dancing the sending. She stood in the centre of the village, beside a body covered with a white sheet. Her golden staff seemed to move of its own accord as Yuna danced, her bicoloured eyes blinded with tears. A cloud of pyreflies twirled with her, gathered around her legs and chest.

As finally, they faded, drifting to the Farplane, Lulu felt herself fall to the ground and weep as Yuna and Tidus joined her.

She stood up and looked at the couple through her tears.

"Look after Vidina for me," she said dully, her voice lacking all emotion. The pair nodded as she left the village for the last time, the eyes of every islander upon her.

* * *

She didn't know how she had summoned the reserves of strength to climb the cliffs and she didn't care. All she knew was that without him, life wasn't worth living.

She gazed at the last puppet, the Onion Knight. She kissed it softly on the forehead and let it fall.

She would be next.

"Lulu! Wait!" Yuna stood on the beach with Tidus, holding Vidina. "Think of your son!"

Lulu smiled sadly at Yuna as her tears finally stopped.

She whispered in a barely audible voice. "I am."

With that, she plunged from the cliff, watching the water get closer and closer as Yuna and Tidus screamed in horror.

The water was icy cold, yet she smiled as she breathed in for the last time and a sensation of bliss and warmth enveloped her.

It was sorrow's embrace.


End file.
